Archive for the ‘Learning Online’ Category

Kenneth Starr is in the news yet again, but this time he is not the bulldog and authoritative and appointed resource we all should listen to. Instead, he balances on a new point of contention, a possible ponzi scheme.

Nobody is immune from the temptation to pull a Bernie Madoff, no matter how much in in the spot light you are, greed

Kenneth Starr

and pressures to perform come crushing in and the option to pay to some clients with other clients investment seems okay. After all, you will be able to make up that money and nobody will know, right?

Well, as the news breaks and as the pieces unfold Ken Starr will have some answering to do. The suspected ponzi program appears to have grown to $30 million according to Zach Lowe of Law.com.

My question is, how will investors ever be able to know if their investment is legitimate. The free market is prone to mischief. It is great to catch the thief, but there is little or no relief to the victim when the only justice is their money back in their bank accounts.

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, I was glued to watching athletes compete each night. To me, these events aren’t ever as exciting as the Summer Olympics, although, the more events I watched this year, the more I enjoyed the historical significance of the Olympic games.

Book: The Power of Full Engagement

At one specific point during the an event there was a delay to the actual competition and in interviewing a top competitor for this specific event the athlete said that he was just trying to remain calm and focused while waiting. After training for the past four years for these games, he was hoping to time his performance so that he would peak at the right moment.

Peaking has everything to do with energy and focus and mastering your energy and focus is an additional topic I would like to hit on regarding The Power of Full Engagement. (see previous article here) Loehr and Shwartz build their book up to one of several points, all of which point at our use and recovery of energy.

Life, in all phases that I can think of, deals with some sort of energy exertion. If we recognize this principle, it does a lot for recognizing our moments of being exhausted or simply out of energy. Loehr and Shwartz attempt to educate us on how to maximize our energy by frequently recovering it during our exerting it.

Positive rituals become a means of accomplishing this. After careful observation, Loehr and Schwartz identify how top performing athletes in the professional sports leagues complete so effectively by have very short recovery periods, frequently. In some cases, the recovery was a ten to fifteen second period, where a positive ritual was observed and thus the energy tanks were capped off again.

The downtime that positive rituals gives is the first stage for energy recovery, however it does not touch the surface of what is needed in order to recover. Seconds doe not do what a good nights sleep can do, however, but following a routine of positive influence on your body and mind enables the significant recovery.

Positive Rituals

Just as when a top free-throw shooter maintains a routine for recovery so she can focus on her shot, the energy required to focus intensely come just before the shot. Everyone has seen this and understand the concept. Bouncing the ball three times, visualizing the ball falling through the net and hitting the net, taking a couple deep detoxifying breathes, bending the knees, and flowing through the shot. This may be your routine and it may have been the highest free-throw percentage shooter in the NBA’s routine. Regardless, any and all routines will be unique to the person.

To work effectively in a job that makes you sit in front of a computer all day may be completely draining after a couple hours of work and the performance begins to drop off. Effective energyrecovery becomes the solution. Holding positive energy renewals like walking to the drinking fountain and back, listening to a rejuvenating song, closing your eyes and taking ten deep breaths. There are several ways to create a repeatable, positive, ritual that can become a routine for rejuvenation.

The refilling of your energy tank will lead to not just peaking once or a couple times each day, but will enable a cycle of continual peaking throughout the day.

Consider the benefits of excelling throughout the day. What would you accomplish? What would you become?

Roller coaster riding through life takes as much out of you as the amusement rides at a park. Whatever it may be that causes energy to do, we have ups – moments of purity, and we have downs – times when we are just down, lost, whatever.

Significance

Book: The Power of Full Engagement

The rides up and down, have to and will happen but the thing about them is that they don’t have to be as dramatic. The ups can be as high as we would like, but the falls don’t have to be as low as they currently are.

James Loehr and Tony Schwartz author an explanation of the energy fluctuations that everybody experiences and why we cannot sustain a steady flow of high performance.

The answers begin with concept that every period of extreme or continuous high performance resides is only as good as the time spent in recovery. This doesn’t mean that both are equitable, but that they are both necessary. Just as a physical work out requiring unusually high exertion of effort will rip the smallest muscle fibers, the recovery of 1 to 2 days will not only rebuild the muscle, but make it stronger in the body’s anticipation of having to sustain that sort of effort again.

James Loerh

Getting back more than what was put in, is always a smart investment. In the same breath, too much recovery time will atrophy the muscle, weakening it so it will not be able to sustain the previous performance.

This is applicable to all types of energy efforts. Whether you are a mom or dad trying to balance the household duties of kids and laundry and dinner and whatever, or whether you are a professional athlete needing to excel on a regular basis in order to maintain the huge contract you just signed. If creating through mental concentration is what is needed

Tony Schwartz

continually, a recovery is just and valuable as the genius idea.

How to? Well, there is a science to that, so check the next posting for it.

Jim Collin’s fantastic book, “How The Mighty Fall”, teaches that the third stage for a company that is falling or failing is “Reaching For Salvation”.

This imparts a sense severe desperation on behave of the company and big decision makers. As the once success of the company seems to be under the examination by a higher power, beyond the control of the company, who is slow separating, cutting, pulling and breaking parts of what the company was once so solid in.

In an attempt to halting this operation, those with the most beneficial interest in stopping the fall and the torture are those able to make the significant decision that will “save” the company.

The situation has put everyone who really cares (those not sharpening and sending out resume’s as a fail safe) in a need, hope and fear position. Hardly what is healthy for correcting wrongs, identifying corrective actions and pursuing initiatives with passion. Struggling to come up with an answer when you have tried cause you to reach for salvation, not because you want to, but because you feel like you need to.

The action typically involves some sort of “savior” solution. A person or product or structure where all the eggs are put into. It is like being in Vegas, not having enough money to get home because weekend had started off well, but quick dissolved and with you last dollar you put it into the slot machine, literally praying for some divine intervention that can save you bacon.

There isn’t a calculated solution or a proven process, just a final change in an attempt to succeed. At first there is a positive reaction. Not because of the reach but because all others have a renewed hope and work effectively and with passion toward effective, high performance. It is short-term.

Eventually, the reality comes to fruition and all realize that it is on them, not something or someone else. They collapse under the realization and expectation.

This is not to say that all situations play out the same way. Not all outcomes are demise and failure. Few learn that it is in their innate ability that they rose to greatness, and it requires the same characteristics to re-rise or rise again. But that is for another posting.

Salvation is spiritual (an physical, in my opinion), however it is not business and there are is not a divine interest in building your company (just a divine interest in building you, in my opinion).

How is it possible to have loads of money and be as content and comfortable as seemingly possible and then is a relatively short amount of time be bankrupt?

Only fools would allow something like this to happen, right? Surely it would have to be the uneducated or the superficially smart or the short-term-only thinker, right?

The answer, of course yes . . . and at the same time a fog horn – NO!

What Is Your Actual Net Worth?

I was once told that you should manage your personal finances the same way a company would manage theirs. Balance sheets, proformas, cash flow statements, general ledgers and whatever additional form of analysis and reporting you can manage to find a use for are applicable not just to the C Corp but the Self Corp.

With all of these tracking and analysis pieces, how could a person or company lose track of what is most vital in running a business and in the very same sense, how could a person lose track of their ability to provide for themselves or even a family when they see everything going on? CASH is the problem.

In every case, whether it is as grand as a company like GM or as small as a person recently into their profession, cash flow builds them up or cash flow crumbs them and their ego into nothing.

You could have the strongest heart in the world and without blood and good blood, your body will, in very short order stop working. Cashflow is the bloodflow of operating and sustaining. Having a net worth of a million or billion or several billion, can do little to support you if that “worth” if stuck. If you have your money tied up in, you name it, a house, a product, a marketing plan, an accounts receivable, and accounts payable, whatever. If you are in a hands tied position with your value, your worth, something that is not money but has a dollar sign tied to it, and you actually need cash, immediately transferable value, in other words “liquidity”, it doesn’t matter how much you are worth.

Cash Is King

In short order your cashflow net worth can be zero or negative when it comes to cashflow; in turn reducing your ability to draw out any value in your actual net worth.

The caution: You are only as valuable as you have cash to operate. Don’t put all of your liquidity into less than immediate returns.

This is my first entry about my love for learning, especially where books are concerned. I have hundreds of volumes at my house that I read, reread, skim and thoroughly enjoy. Although I am not a big fictional reader, I do have my share of Grisham, Brown, even Tolkien. Learning is at the core of who I am and sharing ideas, creating them, coming together with others to think is a passion that I have. Much of mainstream media is governed by the powers that BE (be what, who knows), so I am also very interesting in the efforts of the regular Joe. Now the special stuff is what comes from the thinker who spends her time developing a theory, process or design, tests it, tries it and then is able to share that, to some degree, to the masses – and then, because of the great effort, time and trouble put into this thought and way, she becomes mainstream. One of the most recent examples of this, to me, comes from a fictional writer – Stephanie Meyer. Wow, has she gone from the college grad with a degree in English to the superstar fictional writer that has blown past those who are stale in their way of thinking, right down the road to Hollywood. This independent thinker is the type or writer and person, frankly, that I am looking for. If you know of anybody like that – who is just consumed by having a thought that can be taken to new heights, especially as a book or just an article – maybe an ebook (my new favorite) or e-book, however your like to read it – please share